


Sticky Notes

by warmachine



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, M/M, POV Third Person, Podfic Available, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-18
Updated: 2013-04-18
Packaged: 2017-12-08 21:31:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/766236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warmachine/pseuds/warmachine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave Strider finds a little sticky note in a shop he goes to pretty often. It's nothing but a greeting from some guy named John, and he decides to go along with it just for shits and giggles, and soon he finds himself roped into a very long conversation carried out by sticky notes stuck onto a bulletin board.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sticky Notes

It started a week ago, when he went to get some coffee.

Dave Strider had a little coffee shop he liked to go to. It wasn’t part of a franchise – it was a sweet little shop, tucked away into a street corner like a box of cookies forgotten on a kitchen counter. That being said there wasn’t ever many customers, but Dave really liked it anyhow. They had good coffee, even though it seemed like he was the only person who went there.

There was a little bulletin board near the door where people would staple flyers and information cards and such. Dave usually paid them no mind – they weren’t usually advertising things that sparked his interest.

But then he saw it: a little sticky note.

The corner was sticking out from behind a flyer that was already stuck up there, and Dave had spotted it while he was walking past to leave. It stood out – a little splash of yellow behind a bunch of white and grey.

He reached back behind the flyer and pulled off the sticky note. On it was three words, written in blue ink. The handwriting was a bit messy, but it was small, crammed up into the top corner of the sticky note as if the words were trying to climb off the paper.

“hi, i’m john!”

Dave quirked a small smile at this – it wasn’t something anybody saw often, for certain, so he stepped over to a little table by the window. He set down his coffee and pressed the sticky note onto the table carefully, reaching in to his shirt pocket and taking out the red pen he had there.

“hey john

“im dave”

He smiled and went back over to the bulletin board, pressing the note firmly back behind the flyer where he’d found it. He made sure it wouldn’t fall, then returned to his coffee, stepping outside onto the sidewalk.

-

The next day Dave went back to that same shop. He didn’t usually come every day, but he was anxious about whether this John guy had responded to him or not. He wasn’t trying to get his hopes up; it was probably just a stupid thing that some kid had left there that he’ll never get back to.

Nevertheless, Dave still went back to that shop.

He tried not to make a beeline for the board, and instead he got his coffee first, tapping his foot impatiently. Once he got it he forced himself to take his time adding the sugar, and once he was 100% satisfied he finally let himself scurry over to the board. He took a deep breath and lifted up the corner of that flyer, where that bright little yellow note was still stuck.

His mouth angled up into a smile when he saw the blue reply:

“well hi there dave!! i wanna ask if you come here often but that would be kind of really creepy.”

Dave laughed to himself, glancing over toward the register to see if anybody was watching him. It’s not like it was _terribly_ weird for him to be writing on the sticky note, but it certainly would be awkward if anybody asked him why.

He took his pen out again, at that same table by the window, and he scrawled out a short response:

“how charming”

He replaced the sticky note, took his coffee, and walked outside again, just like yesterday.

-

The days that followed went similarly: Dave would go to the coffee shop every afternoon and check the bulletin board, and there’d always be a little note from John. Before too long, they’d run out of space, and then a little purple sticky note had appeared, right next to the original yellow one.

Dave was wondering how long this would go on for. Surely John wouldn’t keep coming to the shop every single day and writing on a stupid sticky note, no. Not for somebody in a tiny little shop; someone he’d never actually met before.

The thought of the conversation suddenly coming to an end, though, was a bit depressing.

They weren’t talking about anything interesting, to be honest. They had a few things in common: crazy sisters, video games, similar age. It was like having a weird pen pal, or passing notes to a friend in class.

Before too long, Dave found himself being more and more interested in the kid. A few afternoons he brought his computer with him and sat at that table by the window, idly scrolling around on various websites and glancing up at the bulletin board every few minutes. Once he did see somebody go up to it and mess around with something, but upon going up to the guy it turned out he was just taking down one of the flyers.

And then the shop closed.

It was a Saturday morning. It was misty out, and overcast, but it wasn't all that bad. So Dave had went for a walk and wandered over to the shop, only that it would be closed for a few weeks for some interior work.

Needless to say, he was put down for a while. He took unnecessarily long detours when he went to the grocery store _just_ so he could pass the shop, and he refused to let go of that little sliver of hope that John just might be near there. Even though he had no idea what the guy looked like, he felt like he’d just _know_ , like in some cliché movie.

In the end he never saw anyone, never saw any more sticky notes, and the shop opened up again like normal. The whole place was redesigned – no bulletin board to be found.

But still, Dave went to the shop. Every day. He kept going, and going, and going, until one rainy day he had to wait for someone to get to the register to get his order.

He stood there by the counter, tapping his foot and listening to the rain on the roof. It wasn’t raining hard – just a little drizzle, and it was dripping through one part of the roof into a little pie pan on the floor. The door swung open after a couple minutes and the wind blew in, pushing the pan over a few inches and causing the water to drip onto the floor. Dave didn’t think anything of it – people had been coming in more often now, and it wasn’t so uncommon to hear the little jingle of the bell above the door anymore. No, it was something else that caught his attention: the obnoxiously loud squeaking of this newcomer’s shoes on the floor.

Dave sighed and turned to see who it was, and simply rolled his eyes at the awkward, skinny little guy fiddling with an umbrella. Just before he was about to look away he saw the guy’s eyes snap up to meet Dave’s, and he paused a moment to look back at him.

“Dave?”

Dave smirked.

“Hey, John.”

**Author's Note:**

> And then they sat down and talked for hours over coffee.
> 
> I, uh. Could have written this better, I think... I tagged it johndave because it's sort of kind of almost implied if you squint really hard.
> 
> Really I'm just trying to break this terrible writers block I've had for a really long time.
> 
> Anyway. Thanks for reading, if you did. (This was kind of a lame idea so all the awards to you if you endured this entire thing.)


End file.
